Theatre / The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals, Youth Cabaret. At Mill Theatre at Dairy Road until October 17. Reviewed by HELEN MUSA

Youth Cabaret, a developing community theatre organisation with a focus on neurodiverse, disabled and LGBTQIA+ young people, has chosen an ambitious cult horror musical for this year’s uproarious production.

This zany show directed by Krys Pendrich is performed by a tight cast of nine, including the director, playing all the roles, and the acting skills range from detailed naturalism to over-the-top melodrama.

The voices, like the acting, are mixed, (although I suspect some of the flat singing was deliberate) with several extraordinary female vocalists and, in a surprise twist, the revelation that the central actor playing Paul, Mars Que, has a brilliant rock singing voice.

Sometimes slick, sometimes clunky, with an excessive number of blackouts (they need to find a smoother way of achieving scene transitions), this is a company in progress.

The zany action descends into crazy costuming and props, with highly theatrical effects to show disembowelment and even one character’s head splitting open to reveal blue-green brains. It is, after all, horror.

The clue is in the title, The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals.

With lyrics by Jeff Blim and a book by Nick and Matt Lang, the story revolves around Paul, an exceedingly daggy average bloke who really doesn’t like musicals. He sees the citizens of his town, Hatchetfield, overcome by an alien mind (“The Apotheosis”) that makes them burst into song and dance.

Very loosely inspired by the 1956 horror film Invasion of the Body Snatchers, in which alien plant spores fall from space, this show begins with a meteor striking the local Starlight Theater, where Mamma Mia is showing.

The musical takes a savage swipe at everything from contemporary suburban life to academia, the police, the military, religion, coffee culture and above all, conformity, symbolised by the stage musical.

The initial action centres on Paul and his office-mates in the CCRP tech department, Bill (Ostin Gerhardt), Charlotte (Allura Jane-Hunting), Ted (Freddie Hickey) and Melissa (Stephanie Steer) finding plenty of opportunities for people to mime typing, making coffee, collecting printouts and the like.

Out on the streets, trouble is afoot in Hatchetfield. Even at the local Beanie’s coffee shop, where Paul tries to take refuge, the owner has forced the beautiful barista, Emma (Honey Boom), to sing to her customers, even reluctant ones like Paul, who nonetheless finds her enchanting.

There’s a heavy dose of science fiction in this musical, aided by the presence of the mad Professor Hidgens, played with eccentric vocal clarity by Jay Lee Jr. Supposedly working on the side of humanity he is in fact a secret lifelong fan of musicals.

But it is more the Theatre of the Absurd that comes to mind, with ordinary people morphing into larger-than-life, cartoon-like characters.

Unlike the hero of Ionesco’s play Rhinoceros, who is left fighting for humanity to the last, humanity is not getting much of a look-in here. As the body count rises exponentially, even our hero Paul turns out to be susceptible, rather like the heroine of Grease, Sandy, who eventually “shapes up”.

Alas, in spite of Krys Pendrich’s assertion in the excellent provided program that the company aims to hold onto identity, amid the fun, the depressing message of The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals is that the shortest way to personal apotheosis is not through dissent, but by joining the mob.

News all day, every day at CityNewsQBN.com.au.